That Used to Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back by Thomas L. Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum

Columnist Thomas L. Friedman and foreign policy expert Michael Mandelbaum diagnose the state of affairs in America and suggest how the nation can resharpen its innovative edge.

(Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $28)

“There is an unnerving tension at the core of That Used to Be Us,” said David Frum in The New York Times. In their “enlightened and enlightening” new diagnosis of what ails America, columnist Thomas L. Friedman and foreign policy expert Michael Mandelbaum trot out a long list of innovative CEOs and consensus-seeking politicians whose example suggests that all hope is not lost. Yet the authors also undercut their cheerleading with sobering facts. Some 75 percent of military-age Americans, we learn, are now unqualified to enlist because they either haven’t finished high school, have a criminal record, or are physically unfit. The top 1 percent of Americans, meanwhile, takes in roughly a quarter of all annual income—double its share of 25 years ago.

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